Displacing Crime v. Stopping Crime

Interesting story on the crime displacement effect in MA, with decreases in crime in larger cities corresponding to increases in smaller communities. A recognition of the need for pooling scarce resources and cooperating across jurisdictional lines. But, unfortunately, while the officials recognize as well that resources are limited and can’t be spent willy-nilly, they say they can’t pour money into law enforcement and fail to say they can’t pour money into corrections. In fact, prison costs and impacts, especially compared to law enforcement which has been shown to have a bigger payoff in crime reduction, aren’t mentioned at all. Sounds like they need to put those thinking caps back on just a little while longer.